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Ridley Scott remaking Red Riding Trilogy

The Red Riding Trilogy was a series of three British Television films that connects characters and stories of police power and corruption together across the backdrop of the murders of the Yorkshire Ripper and the investigation and eventual capture. The three films take place in 1974, 1980 and 1983, and area adapted from the four novels by David Pearce (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com).

The series was dark, gritty, very realistic and were far from a Hollywood film as you could imagine, so it's with great surprise that we hear today that Ridley Scott is looking into remaking them for Hollywood, and not only that but compressing the films into one.

We'd already heard that they were getting various releases outside of television, and quite rightly so, but to hear that they are now being remade and probably seeing the story transplanted to a American setting. The Yorkshire Ripper in America?

Variety through JoBlo reports that Columbia Pictures has purchased the rights to remake the series and is negotiating with Steve Zaillian to adapt the script and Ridley Scott to direct the film.

It would also be a strong challenge for Ridley Scott, I mean compressing a story that has already been compressed from four novels to three mini-series into one film is going to be a hell of a difficult task. We're talking a film that would span a decade and cover a huge investigation and a great many stories and characters, and then, which I feel is the biggest point here, transferring the whole story to America.

This is a story that works around the Yorkshire Ripper and the corruption and operation of the British police force through that time, how does any of that work in America?

As far as I can see this would be a complete rewrite, and I just don't understand what's going to be kept in the final film from the original apart from set-ups and plot turns and twists. Characters, the way the police operate, the killer, everything else is going to have to be changed for the American version, little will remain.

I honestly don't understand why it has to be Americanised, why couldn't they just make a Hollywood version of the British story? Are the writers and directors not good enough to make it enjoyable for an American audience? Are the American audience so negative to non-American films that they would boycott it?